Last year, more than 60 countries went to the polls, and many saw voters swing to the right, or vote against incumbent governments.
Peter Frankopan is an author and professor of global history at Oxford University and told The Front Page there seemed to be a trend favouring populist politicians.
“I think 10 years ago we were coming out of the horrors of the great financial crisis, people feeling that maybe the older generations had messed stuff up for us.
“There was a kind of freshness of people like Jacinda Ardern and Justin Trudeau, [former UK Prime Minister] David Cameron, and [former UK deputy Prime Minister] Nick Clegg, they were all young leaders.
“Suddenly the world looks a lot more dangerous, but I think there was a moment 10 years ago of optimism, hope, and younger leaders who could sort of frame what they thought was going to happen. [US President] Barack Obama was part of that story too.
“Looking back on it, I wonder how many of those leaders we all thought looked the part and we could all imagine them dropping in for dinner with us and sharing a drink and having a good chat about lots of different things... How many of them were quite superficial and actually underdelivered?
“And I think that that’s quite a long list. Macron probably is joining that club at the moment, as well as a lot of leaders around the world,” he said.
Frankopan said one of the problems with populists is that they often over-promise then under-deliver.
“People have got frustrated with the lack of action and what tends to happen in history is populists who promise action and promise results tend to make complicated issues worse rather than better.
“It’s a real challenge for democracies that we find leaders who can actually make improvements and understand how difficult the job is and can explain that and communicate it to voters.
He said that it requires a special ability for politicians to communicate well and get people to trust them, which can be done if they are seen as working hard.
“One of the problems that people like Trudeau had was, if you get photographed dancing at a Taylor Swift concert while people are worrying about paying the bills, it’s not a great look,” he said.
Elections last year saw populist, nationalist, and far-right parties gain traction, especially in Europe.
That included Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, which grew in popularity in the country’s snap election the far-right Freedom Party in Austria winning 29% of the vote (its best-ever result), and Alternative for Germany became the first far-right political party to win a state election in Germany since World War II.
“I don’t think you need me to remind you what happens when you get populism into power,” Frankopan said.
“That starts with Germany in the 1930s, but that’s what the Russian Revolution did too. That’s what happened with Mao as well in China, and Pol Pot in Cambodia, Mengistu in Ethiopia.
“If you have strong men, and they typically are men, who get into power, then you can persuade your followers to inflict terrible things on people who look different, who worship in a different way, or who are not part of your plan.
“So, I think we need to be careful in protecting freedoms and democracies.
“We don’t know what our limits are. And until those things get resolved, then I think there’s still more of this kind of uncertainty to come,” he said.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about the global shift away from liberalism, and a rise in leaders winning elections despite low popularity.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
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